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Cengage MindTap

Score9 out of 10

14 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Cengage MindTap?

MindTap is an eLearning course management solution from Cengage, a digital learning content and technology provider. For educators, it includes pre-made interactive course materials (such as homework assignments, assessments, etc.), analytics around student engagement and performance, and the ability to customize courses. For students, MindTap offers a mobile app to access eBooks, flashcards, quizzes, grades, and due date reminders.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about Cengage MindTap.
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MindTap saves students thousand of dollars!

Incentivized
Lois McWhorter
Chair at University of the Cumberlands (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

  • User friendly
  • Platform neutral
  • Interactive
  • Adaptive

Cons

  • Include simulation-type projects to decrease online cheating
  • Make assignments more "game-like"
  • More multimedia, color, graphics, ect

Return on Investment

  • Significant savings for students as MindTap is a Cengage product with great pricing
  • Allowed the university to standardize online courses
  • Increased online enrollment due to cost savings

Alternatives Considered

AchieveIt and ConnectWise Automate (formerly LabTech)

Other Software Used

Ellucian Banner, Workday Financial Management, Workday Human Capital Management

Usability

Supporting Student Learning Outcomes with MindTap's Flexible Digital Textbook Platform

Incentivized
Mariann HawkenView profile
e-Learning Coordinator in Information Technology at University of Maryland Baltimore County (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • digital textbook platform with accessibility tools (read-aloud, note taking)
  • interactive exercises and practice tools
  • assessments including self-check quizzes and customizable exams
  • LTI integration to pass grade information to learning management system
  • excellent support for faculty

Cons

  • lots of clicking required to navigate through content or set-up
  • inconsistent student experiences for Original vs. Ultra courses in Blackboard
  • challenging to remove excessive/duplicate gradebook columns when cloning/recycling a course

Return on Investment

  • reduces faculty workload with assessment & content creation
  • increases faculty workload with gradebook management
  • provides students with quality content to support learning outcomes

Alternatives Considered

McGraw-Hill Connect, Pearson Revel and WileyPLUS

Other Software Used

Blackboard Learn, Blackboard Collaborate, Cisco Webex Meetings, Google Classroom, Google Jamboard, Panopto

MindTap in my Business Statistics class

Incentivized
Rafael Teixeira
Assistant Professor at College of Charleston (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • MindTap has applets that help me show students abstract concepts of statistics. Ba accessing and dragging the pointer over a distribution, I can show students how probabilities change as a results of changes in the area under the chart.
  • It has interesting videos showing applications of statistics by companies.
  • MindTap has assignments and additional tool students can use to learn-by-doing, getting feedback immediately.

Cons

  • I'd like to change some questions, eliminating parts of questions that I don't cover in a specific class.
  • I'd like to have random words replacing words in problems' statement to prevent students from looking for answer over the internet.

Return on Investment

  • The positive impact is to help students practice statistics to solve business problems.
  • The negative side is that the pricing might be too high compared to other free options available, even though the free options might not have the same features MindTap has.

Other Software Used

JMP Statistical Discovery Software from SAS, IBM SPSS

Building Engaging Course Content Rapidly with Cengage MindTap

Incentivized
Mark NowowiejskiView profile
Sr. Instructional Designer in Information Technology at Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

  • Customer Support has been outstanding for both students and faculty. Our dedicated reps are very responsive and proactive in touching base with users who have dropped off.
  • The student facing mobile app has gotten very strong reviews. With many of our PT students being working adult on the go, the ability to access study material such as flash cards via their smartphones has been very helpful and it shows it their grades vs sections that just use the hard copy book.
  • Importing content from Mindtap into an LMS like Blackboard is very easily done, everything is customizable and it integrates seamlessly with the course Grade Center. It also makes copying content from semester to semester very painless.

Cons

  • The biggest issue our first-time users have with Mindtap is that ad/pop-up blockers often stop the tool from opening. (Mindtap typically opens in a new window vs inside the LMS) This leads to a lot of initial frustration amongst the students early in the course.
  • MindTap lacks a really strong set of roles outside of Instructor and Student. There is no Teaching Assistant role or and IT/Course Builder role. Additionally setting up students workers as TAs in one course while they may be a student in another concurrently has been more than a little cumbersome.
  • The UI is a bit dated and it doesn't implement many responsive web design features, though this can typically be worked around by downloading the free app.
  • The mobile app experience is not as strong for Instructors as it is for students.

Return on Investment

  • It saves the designer and faculty member a lot of time with course setup - especially in maintaining robust question banks for exams from semester to semester.
  • The pop-up issue often taxes our IT Help desk, especially early in the semester.
  • From a student POV - their pricing model has a very friendly 'try before you buy' model. I believe it is two weeks of free access before they have to choose to subscribe or go with the hard copy version on the textbook.
  • Because of the auto-grading features our faculty and TA's are freed up to focus more on students that may be struggling.

Alternatives Considered

McGraw-Hill Connect and WileyPLUS

Other Software Used

Zoom Video Webinar, Adobe Flash, Blackboard Learn, Atom, GitHub